Andrew Kaplan - Carrie's run

Alexandria, Virginia

“When did it start?” her older sister, Maggie, asked.

They were sitting in Maggie’s SUV near the Van Dorn Metro station, not far from the Landmark Mall in Alexandria. They’d met there instead of Maggie’s office or her house so no one would see them. Maggie was the only person in her family who knew she worked for the CIA.

“Last night,” Carrie said. “I could feel it coming a little earlier, but it really started last night. The margaritas probably didn’t help,” she added.

“Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

“I was working. Something important.”

“Nonstop? No sleep? Little food, either Chinese or maybe just a few crackers?”

“Well, I was at my desk. I was digging into something. I didn’t want to stop.”

“Come on, Carrie. You know perfectly well that all of those are prodromal symptoms of a manic onset for you. You’re my sister and I love you,” she said, brushing Carrie’s hair from her eyes, “but I wish you would let me get you some treatment. You could live a normal life. You really could.”

“Mag, we’ve been through this. The minute I get treatment, whether it’s you or a shrink, or there’s record of a prescription, I lose my security clearance. My job is over. And since, as we both know, or at least you’ve told me often enough, I don’t have a personal life, that doesn’t leave me with anything else.”

Maggie looked at her, squinting slightly against the sun on the car window. The weather was fair, unusually warm for March. People going to their cars had their jackets open or even no jackets.

“Maybe you should do something else. This isn’t a life. We worry about you. Dad, me, the kids.”

“Don’t start on that. And I wouldn’t mention Dad. He’s hardly the one to talk about ‘normal.’ ”

“How does the lithium feel?”

“I hate it. It makes me stupid, logy. It’s like I’m looking at the world through a thick window. A thick, dirty, fifty-IQ-points-lower window. Did I mention thick? I’m like a zombie. I hate it.”

“At least you’re coherent. When I saw you last night, you weren’t. God, Carrie, you can’t go on like this.”

“You know I was fine in-where I was. I was able to get all the meds I wanted. Clozapine works just fine. I can function. I’m a normal person. You’d be surprised. I’m actually good at what I do. Just get me a big supply of clozapine and I’ll be Aunt Carrie and everyone’ll be happy. The kids’ll love it.” Maggie had two small daughters, Ruby, seven, and Josie, five.

“If you think self-medicating, getting all the meds you want, is good practice, you’re crazier than you think.”

Carrie put her hand on her sister’s arm. “I know. I know you’re right. Look, I know you don’t like or understand what I do, but it’s important. Believe me, you and your children sleep safer in bed at night because of what I do. You’ve got to help me. There’s no one else. Otherwise, I’m up the creek.”

“Have you any idea what a risk I’m taking? I could lose my license. Bad enough I’m prescribing for Dad. But at least he’s in therapy. I coordinate with his psychiatrist. Between the therapy and me watching him, he’s been good for two years now. You should spend some time with him. I know he’d like it. You wouldn’t know there was a problem.”

“Tell that to Mom,” Carrie said.

Neither of them spoke. That was a family black hole. The wound that didn’t heal. Their mother, Emma, had disappeared.

“If I can’t meet your father, what about your mother?” her lover at Princeton, John, the professor, had asked her one night in bed.

“I don’t know where she is.”

“What do you mean you don’t know where she is? Is she dead?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s the one thing I do know. I do understand.”

“Well, explain it to me and then there’ll be two of us,” he’d said.

“She left. Just like that. One day she said she was going to CVS. The drugstore. She’d be right back. We never saw her again.”

“Did your family look for her? The police? Did she ever try to make contact?”

“Yes. Yes. And no.”

“Wow! No wonder you don’t talk about your family.”

“That was the day I left for Princeton. She just disappeared and off I went. Just me and a suitcase and my happy childhood memories. Don’t you see? She was free. I was her youngest. The baby. And I was leaving. I could take care of myself. Now do you get an inkling of how screwed up I am? I’m the cute blond undergraduate you want to have sex with, but tell the truth, John. Am I really the girl you want to be with?”

“At least let me get you tested,” Maggie said. “Clozapine has potential side effects that are not good. Hypoglycemia. Agranulocytosis. You understand? Lowered white blood cell count can be really serious. At least let me do that.”

“Listen,” Carrie said, grabbing Maggie’s arms. “Don’t you get it? I can’t do it. Just give me the damn pills and let me get back to work. You don’t understand. I have to get back. It’s important.”

“Here’s three weeks’ worth of samples,” Maggie said, handing them to her in a plastic bag. “It’ll help stabilize you and hold you over, but that’s it. I mean it, Carrie. I can’t keep doing this. It’ll ruin both of us. I want you to seriously consider going into therapy. A psychiatrist can prescribe enough of this for you to walk to the moon on.”

“Shhhh! Be quiet,” Carrie said, turning up the car radio. She’d heard something.

“. . reports that five U.S. servicemen from the Five Hundred and Second Infantry Regiment stationed at a checkpoint outside the city of Abbasiyah, south of Baghdad in the so-called Iraqi Triangle of Death, entered the home of a local Iraqi family, where they are charged by Iraqi authorities with raping a fourteen-year-old girl, then killing her and her entire family and setting the bodies on fire. The soldiers being accused claim that the attack was done by Sunni militants. U.S. military and Coalition government spokesmen have stated that the incident is under investigation. A spokesman for General Casey, commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, stated, ‘We will get to the bottom of this deplorable act,’ ” the announcer said.

Carrie turned the radio down.

“Shit, this is going to blow things up. I’ve got to go. Thanks for this, Maggie,” she said, indicating the pills. “Thanks for coming to get me. I’ll come see the girls as soon as I can. I promise.”

“Is this Iraq thing something you’re involved in?” Maggie asked.

Carrie looked at her.

“We do. . everything. People don’t have a clue. I’ll call,” she said, getting out of the car.

“What about Dad?” Maggie asked. Carrie squinted at her in the sun. “You have to talk to him sometime.”

“Good old Mag, you never give up. I will. Sometime,” she said.

She got back to Langley just in time for an all-hands meeting called by David Estes for everyone in the Counterterrorism Center unit. He told them that they could expect a significant rise in terrorism against Americans both within and outside Iraq as a result of what had happened in Abbasiyah.

“So, just when you think we couldn’t possibly come up with anything that could make us even more unpopular with the Arab street or make the Iraqi population hate us even more, some asshole grunts in Iraq have managed to come up with the best recruiting ad for al-Qaeda since they decided to fly into buildings in lower Manhattan!” Estes snapped angrily. “American targets in the Middle East and Europe are of particular concern.